Category Archives for Art-Workman

FOURTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING, MONDAY, JUNE 6, 1853. … “To turn for a short time to the losses Architecture has sustained during the past year. The hope expressed in our last Annual Report, that Mr. Pugin’s health might be restored to him, have proved vain, and in common with all lovers of medieval art, we have to regret the loss of one who, more than any other man, has contributed to promote sound taste and criticism… It is our duty, further, to thank him (George Gilbert Scott), in conjunction with Mr. Bruce Allen and others, for their endeavours to form an Architectural Museum and a School of Art for workmen. This is perhaps one of the most important undertakings of late years…”

– Oxford Architectural & Historical Society

On the evening of Wednesday week…Mr. George Gilbert Scott, the treasurer and secretary, read a very interesting report, wherein he recorded the origin and progress of the Museum. … Allied to it, and in intimate connection with our Museum, says the Report, is Mr. Bruce Allen’s School for Art for Architectural Workmen.

– The Illustrated London News, 2 July 1853, p533

“…but it originated the architectural museum. I had a call, in consequence of my letter, from a strange person, Mr. Bruce Allen, who told me that he had long had a plan of the same kind in connexion with a school of art for art workman. After my return from Italy he pressed the matter, and invited to a meeting a number of architects, to whom he proposed his scheme, chiefly for the school of art. After several meetings, it was determined to establish an architectural museum, and to allow Mr. Allen to carry on his school of art as a private speculation of his own within the museum, to which he was to be curator.”

“The condition of the poor is, without doubt, unfriendly to mental culture and progress. … [and] exerts a most baneful influence on domestic affections. A family crowded into a single and narrow apartment, which is at once living room, kitchen, bedroom, nursery, and often hospital, must, without great firmness and self-respect, be wanting in neatness, order and comfort. The want of an orderly and comfortable home is among the chief evils of the poor.”